Sec. of State hears about county election experience

By Jenni Grubbs Fort Morgan Times

Posted:
01/15/2013 08:33:56 AM MST

Updated:
01/15/2013 08:34:59 AM MST

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler goes over some of the things his office learned during the November 2012 General Election with Morgan County residents and officials at a meeting Monday afternoon in Fort Morgan. Gessler is conducting a listening tour around Colorado to gather feedback from voters, candidates and election workers about the election.
(Jenni Grubbs/Times)

Fort Morgan played host on Monday to the Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who wanted to hear what Morgan County folks had to say about last November’s general election. Gessler asked the small group of area residents, elected officials and county election workers to share what they learned from the election, what worked and what could have gone better. “Every election, you get people who accumulate a lot of knowledge,” Gessler said. “My worry was that knowledge would scatter to the four winds.” This was just one stop on the statewide listening tour that Gessler is conducting to keep that worry at bay. What Gessler heard in Morgan County was that things went pretty smoothly, but there were some concerns. But first he shared his overall verdict: 2012’s election was a “good” one. “I think it worked out really well,” he said. “We had fewer problems than in the past.” He pointed out that there was greater participation statewide, as well as more voters among military and overseas Coloradans. “It was probably the best election from a statewide perspective,” Gessler said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t do better.” He said that was his goal with the listening tour, to gather people’s perspectives on things that could have run better or that were especially successful. “If you want to continually improve, you have to continually gather feedback,” he said.

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“We want to build a better election than what we’ve had before.” Before the stop in Fort Morgan, Gessler held similar meetings in Boulder, Araphoe, El Paso and Logan counties. And he planned to do other stops around the state, as well, including six more counties next week. He said it was “great” to hear from “real people with real experiences” who shared their perspectives on the 2012 election. And the Morgan County folks were very willing to share their experiences. Morgan County Commissioner Laura Teague and Morgan County Clerk and Recorder Connie Ingmire both told Gessler that they appreciated the online voter registration system that allowed people to check their registration status. Teague said she used it several times before the election to make sure she was all set to vote. And Ingmire said it was helpful for her office. “We liked it,” she said. “We thought it was very helpful.” Fort Morgan resident Jerry Wathen, who served as an election judge, said the online voter registration system seemed to have been a bit of a problem for some of his fellow judges, though. Gessler wanted to know what kind of problem Wathen meant. He said that some of the older, less tech-savvy election judges were unsure of how it worked or its accuracy. But “from my view, it worked better,” Wathen said. “We didn’t have to mess with paperwork.” He noted that training might have been an issue and that the online system was “the coming thing” and would be something future election judges would need to be able to adjust to using. Wathen also said that during his time working at the vote center at the Fort Morgan American Legion post he observed a difference in the number of voters comfortable with the newer voting technologies, and fewer people needed help understanding how to use the machines. “I think voters are getting educated about the electronic voting machines,” he said. He also said that he saw an increase in the number of provisional ballots people cast compared with his other years as a poll worker. Wathen also noted that most of the voters he encountered had driver’s licenses or photo ID’s, but at least one person used a utility bill for identification. Still, he said that everyone he talked to indicated a favorable opinion of a statewide voting ID. Wathen also was concerned with the possibility of voter fraud caused by names of deceased people whom he had known still on the voter registration rolls. “I personally feel you need to take them off quicker than you’re doing it,” Wathen told Gessler, “so when you get a precinct list, you’re not saying, ‘that one’s deceased.’” Still, Wathen said he didn’t encounter any problems or real glitches with voting on election day at his location. Also, he said people seemed to have been better informed than in previous years about what was on the ballot. “People weren’t coming in saying, ‘what do we vote for here’ like they were two years ago,” he said. Wathen attributed this to people getting used to the voting process and using either the machines or voting a paper ballot. Gessler thanked Wathen for all of his contributions. He noted that “obviously there’s been a lot of controversy about the electronic equipment” due to shifting rules created by a mixture of the state and federal legislators over the last several election cycles. “What we’re moving toward is a more uniform voting system across the state,” he said. That system likely would include plenty of paper ballots, he said. “My sense is Colorado is going to move more toward paper and away from e-machines,” he said. “But I could be wrong.” Gessler said that he was putting together a task force to work on the question of a statewide voting system. That task force includes Ingmire. Gessler also responded to several of Wathen’s comments. He said he does agree with many Morgan County residents’ support of a statewide voter ID program, as well as tighter voter rolls. “We do need to do a better job of (purging) voter rolls,” he said, including the names of the deceased. “We’re trying to figure out how to remedy that problem.” He pointed out that in 2012 there were more people on the Morgan County voter rolls than the total population of the county, but that deciding who belongs on there and who doesn’t was a complicated process. “If someone passes away not in Colorado,” his office has limited ways of getting that information, Gessler said. “But we do have ideas we’re kicking around.”